Make a Fairy House (out of natural materials)

Guest Post from Zanni Louise from My Little Sunshine House

It was one of my first sleepovers. I was about eight. I laid awake, restless. Excited.

“Do you think it’s dark enough yet?” asked my friend.

We pulled back the covers, and with torches navigated our way through the living room, and into her back garden.

We looked under the table, we lifted leaves and we peered into bushes. No fairies.

“They probably don’t like the torch,” I told my friend. An expert, I was.

We looked a bit longer, but eventually relented. Fairies do not want to be seen.

Fairies were a big part of my imaginary world, as a child. I made houses for them in the back corner of my grandma’s garden. I wrote childish poems about them. I talked to them for hours, as I sat in the hollow of the old olive tree on our farm.

My nearly-four-year-old daughter talks to fairies too. She has borrowed the names “Harmony” and “Rhapsody” from the ABC for Kids series. I often hear her muttering to Harmony and Rhapsody as she makes things for them in the garden.

We made this simple, little fairy house together from bits we found in the kitchen and garden.

1. We took a 2L plastic milk carton, and I cut the top off. This project would work well with a 1L cardboard milk carton too, but if you use a 1L carton, don’t cut the top off – it will be perfect as a roof for your fairy house.

2. Use scissors to cut a door into the carton. I cut a three-sided rectangular flap, so it could open and close easily. If it’s safe to pierce a hole into the side of the carton, you can also make windows.

3. Place the carton upside down on a large plate.

4. Use bark and pieces from the garden to decorate the fairy house. We used paper bark, as it is so fine. We tore it into little pieces, and used craft glue to collage it on. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect – the fairies won’t mind!

5. Sprinkle the fairy house with petals from the garden. Fairies love colour (so they told me), so go crazy. A young child can easily take the reins in this step.

6. Decorate the plate with moss, fern, grass, or just plain old weeds. We used a combination, and collected enough to completely cover the plate.

7. Use a short, stumpy stick as a chimney. Ours just sat on the roof, but you could also glue it.

8. Hide your fairy house somewhere in your garden for the fairies to enjoy.

Our little fairy house has survived a week of rain in the garden. Turns out paper bark is a surprisingly durable building material.

Do your children play fairy games? Did you believe in fairies as a child?

About Zanni Louise

Zanni Louise is an emerging children’s book author, freelance writer and blogger at My Little Sunshine House. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

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